Human rights in Finland are protected by the
constitution and extensive domestic safeguards, in addition to the
country's active membership in most international human
rights treaties.

Areas of continuing interest to international agencies that
monitor human rights include:

Conscientious
objectors to both military and civilian service are jailed for
six months. There are about 10-20 conscientious objectors every
year. Most are in minimum security, open facilities, and objecting
is not entered on criminal records.

Charges of racist/xenophobic treatment of
ethnic minorities by officials, and that
refugees are hand-picked by the Ministry of the Interior on basis
of country of origin citing "security reasons".

Mandatory options of civilian or military
service were of unequal duration: civilian service 13 months,
or one month longer than the longest conscript service (conscript
officers and underofficers and certain specialists such
as certain vehicle operators), 12 months, and 5 months longer than
the average service in army, 8 months. Rebuttal of criticism of the
length of civilian service often point out that whereas conscripts
are often on duty around the clock (especially in the field),
civilian servicemen often only work during office hours. However,
an act enacted in 2008 changed civilian service to 12 months. Some
25% of conscripts serve 12 months, with the large majority serving
6 months.[5]